david cronenberg
edith head
5,106 Posts
i'm kinda embarassed to say that i love dude's movies (file under favorite canadians; guilty pleasure) cuz they are high production trash. i was at my friend's house watching bad tv and the trailer for his new flick came on and it looks like firei think i'm the only one i know who liked "a history of violence" a lot despite the laughable sex scenes and corny one liners. "dad are you gonna 'wack me'?" that scene where viggo faces off the hitmen on his suburban front lawn is so fucked up and hilarious at the same time. ROCK YOU IN YOUR FACE STAB YOUR BRAIN WITH YOUR NOSEBONEvideodrome is my shitscanners too
HAHAHA! i love this scene
HAHAHA! i love this scene
Comments
Maria Bello in a cheerleader's uniform =
As was Viggo killing everybody in sight.
Plus William Hurt cameo?
I thought AHoV was decidedly overrated by critics. I remember thinking that the movie was a CRONENBERG FEATURE first and an adaptation second; not nearly as true to the graphic novel as I'd hoped (although, given its size...). The Hurt cameo, especially, reminded me of a syndicated WGN TV mobster stereotype bit on a Saturday late-afternoon movie. I just haven't seen enough Cronenberg films to make sweeping judgements about the man or his corpus, but I am of the opinion that his cult goes before him, for better or for worse.
I see him as a more mainstream, Canadian, Peter Greenaway ('80s era overlap + pure shock value). Is any of this criticism fair?
good call! i agree. his movies have been 80s for a few decades. funny he hasn't evolved much in terms of modern filmmaking, but i'm a sucker for his formula. quiet suburbia, images of kids sleeping, someone pouring a cup of coffee in a diner, just images of everyday people. and then all of a sudden some guy's brains are exposed and i'm covering my eyes with my hands. i love the special effects though. he is one of the few the uses old school blood packets (squibs?) during an era of cgi bloodbaths. and i love howard shore's scores for his flick, even though they aren't too memorable outside of the silverscreen, they are perfect for his movies.
i'm gonna admit that i liked eXistenZ a lot because it was around the time i was deep into resident evil 2 so this role playing video game movie was so entertaining. willem dafoe killed it.
i still can't watch naked lunch though. that movie scares the hell out of me.
Cronenberg plays a psychotic psychiatrist in?
It's a Clive Barker thing, and I am so not into
him, but always liked this movie. Cronenberg's
character totally creeps me out.
I always ride for Videodrome. I laughed when you
said he's been making 80's films for 2 decades, it's
true, but Videodrome was fresh in the 80's and really
stood out as a neo-sleaze art-trash mindfuck.
I liked eXistenZ too.
Haven't seen aHoV yet, always meant too, if only for the
cast - wasn't sure what the Cronenberg factor would be.
Indeed Cronenberg is truly creepy in Nightbreed.
I really liked AHOV, haven't read the graphic novel (apparently Cronenberg didn't either) but as a film in it's own right I thoroughly enjoyed it and it was possibly one of my favourite films of the year despite it's faults.
I actually watched Naked Lunch the other day again and found it far less gruelling than I remembered, probably as I wasn't 16 and stoned out of my brains this time round. Love Videodrome as James Woods is a legend in my book.
Honourable mention to the Fly but I really liked his late seventies/early eighties body horror films like Scanners, Rabid, The Brood and, my favourite, Shivers. How can you hate on a film that has a slithering phallic turd as its monster?
i celebrate dude's entire catalog
no one mentioned the brood
I'm a fan of dude. I thought AHoV was the shit.
eXistenZ is the only film of his I can't really get into.
Oliver Reed (RIP) is amazing in The Brood!!
No mention of Rabid, Shivers, The Fly, Dead Ringers, Naked Lunch? Jesus, the man is a genius. I always love any interviews with him I can get my hands on too.
Actually, those were all mentioned.
And AHoV was
I'm late. Too slow.
really? i saw this in the theater when a movie i meant to see was sold out. i had no idea it was cronenberg and then all this weird shit started happening with video games being animals. and there were spores. and it was ultra violent. and jennifer jason leigh was being weirder than usual. i love eXistenZ.
the only movies of his i can't sit through is Spider and Crash
Dear Ringers is definitely up there as my all time favorites. Videodrome is my favorite by a mile though, which is weird because i don't like James Woods.
I thought everybody liked James Woods?
Oh yea, Spider. I forgot about that one, probably because it is so forgettable. That one was really disappointing.
(Slightly unrelated - while Ralph Fiennes is not the type I usually find attractive - dude's nude scene in Red Dragon was highly impressive.)
Dead Ringers is fantastic - the mood is so well done. When he unrolls those customized surgical instruments - pure chills.
I don't like him either.
I never really got into existenz, it felt like too much like he was retreading ground covered in Videodrome without the seedier aspects. In fact, I'd kind of lost interest in his films after Naked Lunch until AHOV came out.
One I don't think mentioned so far is M. Butterfly which continued his themes of the self/id etc and used Cronenberg's detached style to beautiful effect. I have a real hard time watching Jeremy Irons in anything though which is a shame (ironically Dead Ringers is one of the few films I truly appreciate him in).
I stand corrected.
I agree with you about J Irons, too, but what I don't like about him made him perfect for Dead Ringers.
that's exactly how i feel about James Woods in Videodrome
Aha. I guess this would be exactly the same thing I feel about Richard Gere in Internal Affairs.
i have no idea what you're talking about
Which was, in turn, what made him perfect for American Gigolo. His ability for playing amoral sleazebags is a talent that remains largely untapped.
Tom Cruise has this on lock.
He's certainly done a few impressive turns of that nature in recent times, but I think a lot of that is down to him being cast against type somewhat. Gere went down a similar "classic Leading Man" route after starting out as a pimp in Looking For Mr Goodbar but, for me, his best roles have been those where he's played some sort of slimeball.
I always thought The Hidden was cronenberg until two seconds ago
Still a good movie. cronenbergish
HELLO THE FLY?!?!?!
I did not like Dead Zone. Boring.